i have lied my way to the stars
by ohmytheon
Summary: (Star Wars AU) For as far as he can remember, Roy was told to keep his Force sensitivity a secret to protect himself and others, but after years of training and a life filled with twists and turns and bumps in the road, the struggle against the Force is becoming harder every day. He's supposed to be just an Intelligence Officer in the Rebel Alliance - except that he's so much more.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:** Oh look, another FMA AU because I'm weak and have zero control over myself. I decided to just do inter-connected one-shots, not in chronological order, instead of a long chaptered fic, mostly because I don't have the energy for it and also because I don't have a set ending or direction with it either, just a shit ton of ideas. I've literally got ten billion other FMA AU ideas, but look, Star Wars has become very important to me recently. Plus, I kept thinking about the FMA Star Wars official art.

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither Fullmetal Alchemist or Star Wars. I'm too poor.

* * *

 _i have lied my way to the stars_

* * *

Roy's mind is distant, as far away as the stars, his thoughts drifting aimlessly and his eyes focused on nothing as he stares out the cockpit window of his ship. He is leaning back in the pilot's seat, one hand lying on the console, a finger tapping steadily, while he holds his other hand palm up. A single gold coin, now rendered mostly useless after the quick and horrifying annihilation of Lior, floats a few inches in the air above his palm, twisting and spinning without direction.

The cockpit door opens behind him, but he doesn't hear it, his mind so far gone. It could've been Imperial stormtroopers come to confiscate his Rebel ship and he wouldn't have noticed at this point. He doesn't want to focus on anything; if he does, there's a high chance that he won't be able to think of anything else and that isn't a good idea. He has to keep collected; he has to remain calm.

Most importantly, he has to block out the pain. To let any of it in, even just a crack, will break into a flood and he is too dangerous when he is like that. If he can't control himself, even he is afraid of what he might be capable of. It isn't anything good. He's been warned as far as he can remember that he isn't allowed to let loose like others – he's _different_ – and so he blocks it all out in a desperate gambit that he doesn't shatter.

" _Sir_."

When Roy impassively glances back, he sees his second-in-command, Riza Hawkeye, standing in front of the now closed cockpit doors. She has made sure to give him privacy after the events of this past week, keeping him mostly separated from the crew as he deals with things on his own, as he's always been taught to do. It isn't a pleasant process, just a lonely and tiresome one as it has been since he started learning, but at least he isn't completely alone now.

The slightly disapproving look on her face matches the strain in her voice. Her eyes aren't on him, however, but on the coin that is still slowly rotating in the air. He follows her gaze and blinks, as if seeing it for the first time, and then the coin drops into the palm of his hand, where it disappears as he makes a fist and buries it in his pocket.

He didn't mean to use the Force so casually, especially not right now, but the feel of it comforted him. It washed over him in soothing waves, understanding him in a way that no one else could, not even Riza, and he needed that now. He didn't want to feel alone. He needed to know that he wasn't and the Force is always a good source of that, making him feel connected to every living thing in the galaxy and one. It makes him feel almost complete. It's there in the back of his mind now even when he isn't using it, tempting and prodding, but he's learned how to ignore it after years of suppression and fear.

"I wasn't thinking," Roy tells her as he looks back out the window, mostly telling the truth.

Riza knows just how Force sensitive he is and also how dangerous that knowledge is. There are no Jedi left, at least none to be found. They were either killed, captured, or forced into hiding after Order 66 was given during the Clone Wars so long ago. He was only a child then, barely old enough to be considered a youngling Jedi had his own Grey Jedi mother not shielded him from recruitment. Even now he wonders, if she knew, if she sensed something, that kept her from allowing him to be taken in. If he had been, like so many other children, he would be dead now, killed by a Sith in his role to ruin any future of the Jedi.

He's kept the secret for an incredibly long time, for all his natural life, so that only a few knew of it. Roy almost winces, but stops himself. It's more than a few now. Darth Van knows it now. He shouldn't have been so reckless, but when he saw Ed so helpless and devastated and angry, so ready to fight to his death, Roy acted in the only way his mind would let him. If he had held himself back, as he had done so many times before, Ed would be dead and Hughes would be–

No, he can't think about that. He clenches his fists. He has to think of something else or he will– he can't–

Riza lays a hand on his shoulder. It's not much, but it's just enough to bring him back. He wishes that she could do more. He wishes she'd let him wrap his arms around her, press his face into her middle, and just breathe. But she holds herself back for his sake as much as her own. "Can you not mourn just a little?"

"There isn't any time," Roy intones flatly.

"I don't think bottling your grief will help you though," Riza sighs. She sounds sad. He wonders if she has cried in private over their loss or if she hides it from even herself. It's not like she has to push everything away, not like him, but she does it anyways out of professionalism. "Eventually it's too much – there isn't enough room – and you explode."

It sounds horrifying. It sounds wonderful. Deadly. Relieving. He's not capable of letting things go and he has held onto so many things in his life. For a second, he sees Hughes' laughing face and then his mother's conspiratorial smile and his soul aches at the loss he feels in the Force with their deaths. How much more can he hold before it's too much?

Roy shivers, despite himself, remembering just how much _power_ – the overwhelming strength and need for more – he felt when he used the Force against Darth Van. It was too much, so much, not enough, and he felt drunk on it for an hour even after, craving more and terrified of it. One was not supposed to use the Force in tandem with so many strong emotions driving them, but just the memory of it was enough to tempt him still even knowing how much destruction it could bring. Maybe that is what the Rebellion needed, after all.

"How long before we land?" Roy asks, trying to distract himself.

"Not long," Riza says. A frown appears on her face. "You can't–"

"I know; you don't need to worry about me," Roy says as he stands up. When he faces her, he gives her a reassuring smile that he hopes reaches his eyes. "I'll be good. Not even a hint of the Force."

She eyes him with barely concealed suspicion before nodding her head in acceptance and walking out of the cockpit. Roy sighs as he puts a hand on the back of his chair to steady himself. Not a hint. He closes his eyes. It's getting so much harder to say that and believe it, not with the Force calling to him so demandingly these days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** I forgot what the exact message on tumblr was, but it was something about how Riza might be connected with Roy in this AU. And seeing as how I am obsessed with both FMA and Star Wars, of course I'm not going to let go of this.

* * *

Riza never quite understood the strange sensations she felt while growing up. It was like the hairs on the back of her arm would stand up at attention, a tickling in the back of her mind, the sense that there was something just out of the corner of her eye and she could almost see it if she turned around slowly enough. Of course, she never saw anything. It was just the same old house, the wood creaking in the dark, the wind whispering through cracks, her alone as she washed dishes while her father was locked away in his office.

She didn't remember the day her father realized that she wasn't Force sensitive. She was too young to recall the memory of being tested by her father, only to fail miserably. However, she can imagine how it must've felt: the embarrassment creeping up on her, only to overwhelmed by shame and then disappointment. Her father's entire life revolved around the Force and she probably fainted trying to do something as simple as move a pen a few centimeters. After that, she was pushed to the edges of her father's life, any chance of involvement in his research gone, and she learned to do other things. Like picking up a blaster and memorizing its weight in her small hands, sneaking around the old house silently as to not disturb or alert her presence, even playing on her mother's old VR flight simulators.

She became someone else that could live outside of the Force, but it didn't make her feel any better and it didn't make her father pay more attention to her.

The strange sensations never went away, but became a part of her normal life. She figured it had something to do with living in such close proximity of someone that used the Force so often. Every now and then, she wondered why her father had never been picked up as a Jedi, back when they existed not so long ago, but she supposed that she should be grateful. She probably wouldn't have been born or her father would've been killed when Order 66 was initiated and Jedi throughout the galaxy were eliminated.

By the time her father took on an apprentice of sorts, a boy close to her age who apparently had been cursed with being Force sensitive in a time when being such a thing was dangerous, that those odd feelings became more noticeable. Roy didn't have the same tendency to hide the Force from Riza like her father did. Instead Roy would use it casually, pulling a book off the top shelf or twirling a pen in the air. She couldn't tell whether he did it to impress her or genuinely didn't think about it. The only reason she thought it was the former was because he was careful to not use the Force whenever her father was around.

The number one rule was that Roy was to not use the Force in public, especially in front of people that were not anywhere near Force sensitive. That included his teacher's young daughter. But she could tell that Roy felt sullen when he was forced to suppress his natural abilities. It was like dimming a light or muffling a sound. The colors of the world faded the longer and harder he shoved his Force sensitivity into a locked box and did his best to ignore it.

Sometimes, after Roy came to stay with them, she would go weeks without something tickling in the back of her mind – and then, out of nowhere, it would come to her. It was months before she realized what it was and she found herself wondering how it had taken her this long to figure it out. Somehow, some way, even though it had been proven on multiple occasions that Riza was not Force sensitive, she could feel it through others. She could sense its use. She knew when Roy was using the Force. Even worse, it wasn't just that tickling, strange sensation, but a _pull_ , like it was dragging her towards him or maybe the Force itself.

She didn't know what to think of it – in fact, it scared her at first – so she said nothing. The times when Roy used the Force became fewer and farther in between, but the few times he did, she would look up sharply and know exactly where he was in the house even if he wasn't using it. By then, it had been almost four years since her father had last used the Force, to the point where sometimes she forgot that he was Force sensitive. Near the end of Roy's time with then, it had been near eight months since his own last use of the Force. He was getting a lot better at shutting it out, ignoring the temptation, perhaps pretending that it didn't exist. She wasn't quite sure what went on in the lessons between Master and apprentice, as she was largely kept out, and as close as they were, she could not bring herself to ask Roy questions about it. All she knew was that it made him sad, even if he didn't say it out loud.

So she kept quiet and maintained her distance. She let her heart break when Roy told her that he was leaving to join the Rebellion and allowed it to turn to steal when he left one morning. The sensation that she could feel something more – _be_ something more – was gone. She hadn't known how much the Force had played such an integral part of her life until it was missing from it. She watched her father turn even colder and wither away. She watched Storm Troopers invade her home town and harass her neighbors for information and said nothing.

And when their time finally arrived, all she could do was stand in horror when she came home to find Storm Troopers aiming blaster rifles at her father. There was no tingling, warning sensation of the Force when the Imperial soldiers shot him down for refusing to tell him where his research was hidden. Her father had not tried to use the Force in an attempt to save himself; he was too far gone from it. When the Troopers turned on her, she could only confess that she knew nothing; she wasn't Force sensitive; she was worthless. And so she stayed silent and they left her to watch as they torched the house.

She was still rummaging through the burnt wreckage when Roy came, his ship appearing in the horizon and landing just twenty feet away from what used to be her home. With a hand held over her eyes to shield them from the sun, she watched as Roy clambered out of the ship and staggered towards her, his eyes wide with shock and face lined with grief.

"Riza," he gasped, like the faint wisps of smoke was choking him, "when I heard what was happening here–" His eyes roamed over the remains of her home, the place where the two of them had met and grown up together, and he ran his fingers through his hair. "I came as soon as I could."

It was not soon enough, but she didn't have to tell him for him to know that. She wasn't the kind of person that rubbed salt in the wound. That was Roy's specialty when he was feeling particularly vicious and upset. He would've done it now to anyone that wasn't her. She noticed, without saying anything about it, that the jacket he was wearing bore the symbol of the Rebel Alliance on the sleeve. The ship was likely one of theirs as well; she couldn't imagine that they had just let him come here to see her on a whim. Had he commandeered the ship or come up with a plausible excuse?

She still hadn't spoken a word, just stood there and watched him process the scene. Later, she would recognize it as shock. She was disassociating. He would never fault her for it or bring it up.

And then Roy turned away from her, hands clenched into fists at his sides, eyes screwed shut, nostrils flaring as he bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed and she could _feel_ it. The sensation was so overwhelmingly powerful, so painfully acute, that she almost stumbled.

"Roy–" Riza took a sharp intake of breath. She wasn't sure if he heard her or not. Either way, he didn't stop. Jagged, burnt pieces of wood began to crack even further under the pressure, pieces of concrete rumbled underneath and around them, and Riza suddenly realized that Roy's Force sensitivity was much stronger than she had ever imagined it could be. It had been years since she'd been able to detect a hint of the Force, but nothing like this.

It sung of life, but it was tinted by grief and rage. Riza didn't know a lot about the Force, but she knew that it was dangerous to channel when feeling strong emotions. It was why her father had slowly stopped using it after her mother's death. It led to terrible, dark paths. It led to horror and pain. It made her think of all the things she was bottling up and afraid to let loose. She could've laughed at the irony. What was she hiding it for? She wasn't the one that could destroy things by simply losing control of her emotions.

Riza stepped through the trembling debris and placed a hand on his shoulder. She wasn't sure, but she thought that she could feel the Force radiating off of him somehow. It probably didn't work that way, but she thought– It didn't matter. He needed to put an end to this. "Roy," she said, "you need to stop." His head dropped and she could feel his desire to lash out. "It's _too much_. You need to stop. You can't channel the Force when you're like this. You know that. Take a breath. Come back to me."

The Force didn't vanish like it normally did; it slowly drained out of him, like a creak, until his shoulders were slumped and his arms dangled. All the fight in him was gone, replaced by the guilt that he'd been trying to hide from. She knew it; she felt it too.

"I'm sorry; I–" Roy swallowed. "I should've been here. I shouldn't have left you. It made you…vulnerable."

"Better that you left," Riza had to admit, "or you would've likely been killed or taken captive." He turned to face her, a wounded look on his face. She touched his face with her fingertips. It was soft. He'd always had such a boyish face. Without the anger, he just looked very sad. "You're here now. That's all that matters."

"I haven't…" He moved his head and she pulled her hand away. She couldn't tell if he'd done it because the touch was too much or not enough. Even now, it was hard to tell with him. "I haven't used the Force in a very long time. I've been so good. But it's…it's hard, you know. Even after so many years, it comes naturally and I have to fight it every time. It just makes me–"

"Feel alive?" Riza smiled. "I understand. Truth be told, I missed it."

"You…missed it?" Roy furrowed his brow and stepped closer to her. "Riza, you're not–?"

Riza shook her head. "No, I'm not Force sensitive, but I…" How to put into words the strange feelings she'd had all her life but had never been able to understand? Nothing felt adequate now over the ashes of her past, especially not when it had been over a year since she had last seen Roy and even longer since she'd felt it. "I can feel it – the Force – when it's being used. I lived with it all my life; I didn't understand. But then you came along and I just knew."

"Did your father know?" Roy asked. She shook her head again. "Does anyone know?"

"No, I never told anyone," Riza replied, "except for you just now."

"Why?"

Riza looked him in the eyes. "Because I trust you." She could pick out the precise moment when Roy decided to never leave her again. That hadn't been her intentions at all, but she thought perhaps he had just been looking for an excuse to ask her to join him. He didn't need one, of course. She had nowhere else to go. Joining the Rebellion only made sense. "Would you like to see what the Storm Troopers killed my father over?"

"His research." Roy searched her eyes. "I thought–"

"My father was a paranoid man, but he wasn't always wrong," Riza pointed out. "He never kept his research at home. Too risky. And so he did the only thing he believed no one else would think of: entrust the whereabouts of his research on the Force to his daughter who isn't Force sensitive and therefore above suspicion. Only I know where it is." She wrapped her arms around herself protectively. It seemed impossible that it could be cold here, but she felt like shivering under the intensity of Roy's gaze. "And you're the only one I'd trust with it. I thought, well– Maybe it can help you. This struggle with the Force, it's never going away, is it? It's a part of you."

"Yes," Roy breathed.

"If it can help you – if it can help the Rebellion – I want you to have it."

A guarded expression came over Roy's face, like he was trying to hide from her. Was he wary? Was he fearful? Did he not want her to know how much he wanted it? He didn't have to hide that from her. She knew now that the Force would always be with him. "Riza…"

She took his hands. "Please. It's yours. I can do nothing with it. All I can do is tell when someone is using the Force and that isn't very helpful at all."

"It would be to me," Roy said, "I mean, to help me, you know, keep it under wraps."

She knew what he was asking without him actually saying it. She knew that he was trying not to sound eager, but she could see it in his eyes. He was still the boy she had grown up with, wanting to save the galaxy. She also knew the inherent dangers and temptations that lied in her father's Force research. She knew the mechanics of the Force, but not the reality of it. She couldn't help but wonder how much of a struggle it truly was for Roy and how much of a face he put on for everyone, even her. But if this could help him, if she could help him, she would choose this path.

The stars began to appear above them as the sun set. All she could go was up.


	3. Chapter 3

"You were reckless," Riza told him on the ship, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You let yourself be known."

"I did what needed to be done," Roy replied calmly. He did not feel anywhere near like that though. Every nerve inside of him was lighting up until it felt as if his entire body was electric. His skin tingled and his fingers twitched around the metal in his right hand. It felt cool somehow, despite the fact that a laser hot beam burned inside of it due to the Kyber crystal it held. His mind raced at the mere memory of how it felt to truly wield the lightsaber and the power of the Force that coursed through his body.

Too long, he'd hid it from the world. Too long, he'd hid it from himself. This was who he was. It was a part of him, as it always would be, and there was no hiding it now. The Force burned brightly inside of him and he was all too eager to let it consume him when he'd tampered it down for so long. He didn't know if he could go back to the way things were or let it go, even though he knew that he had to still try. He'd thought, mistakenly, that after all these years, using the Force wouldn't be sotempting, but now that he had, it was all he could think about.

"You not only put yourself in harm's way," Riza continued, "but caught the attention of a sith lord-"

"What else could I do?" Roy demanded, rocketing out of his pilot's chair. "Was I supposed to let Edward die? Just watch as Darth Van cut him down? Should I have walked away from him? Counted him as just another loss of the Rebellion?"

Despite his sudden outburst, Riza didn't back away from him nor did she flinch at his accusing questions. They both knew the answers. There had been no other choice. He hadn't had a blaster on him and he couldn't physically launch himself at a man known for murdering people with just a clench of his fist. Either Roy reacted in the way that he'd done or Edward would've die. He hadn't known the kid for very long, but he knew without a doubt that Edward would've died before joining Darth Van and the Empire. He would've tossed himself off the bridge or attacked the sith lord with his remaining hand, knowing full well that it would be the death of him.

"Of course not," Riza said gently. Her voice brought him back down, sending soothing waves over his mind, but there was still a jittery buzz running just underneath his skin that he couldn't get rid of. "This will complicate things though."

"I know." Roy turned on his heels and ran his fingers through his hair. "I know."

There hadn't been anything else he could do. Despite years of suppressing it, years of ignoring it, years of locking it away in a locked box in the back of his mind, the Force had come roaring back to him like it had never gone away. Without even thinking, it had leaped up to meet him, as if it had been eagerly awaiting the day he called to it again. He hadn't known how much he'd missed the Force until it had flooded his senses. That raw power, that overwhelming strength of knowing. He didn't even know what he knew except that he did. It was everything. It was nothing. It was the spaces in between.

The Kyber crystal powering the lightsaber had sung so beautifully in his hand and mind, a song that he'd never heard and yet somehow knew, a half-finished song that needed him in order to complete it.

His fingers still dragging through his hair, he stilled and closed his eyes. He tried to ignore the Force like he'd learned as a teenager, but it was there, pulsing in the air. Had it ever truly gone away or had it simply been waiting for him to return? The Force wasn't just power; it was a way of life. Had he even been living the entire time he'd refused to use it? He breathed steadily, trying to recall the meditations he'd been taught by Master Hawkeye, Riza's own father, to control it, but he didn't want them.

He wanted the Force. All these years, it had been a false peace, like the propaganda that the Empire perpetrated throughout the galaxies before the Death Star had destroyed the planet Xerxes and become a horrifying reality.

"Roy," Riza whispered and her voice was so sad that his heart crumpled. When he opened his eyes and turned to face her, her eyes were downcast and a shadow hung over her face. His hand dropped to his side. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to protect you."

Something seized in his chest and he stepped closer to her. They were so good at keeping a distance from one another. It reminded him all too painfully of how he'd separated himself from the Force. She was always there, so close to touch, and yet he very rarely lifted a hand to do so, even when he wanted to, even when it was all he could think ago. In the middle of hyperspace on a ship, alone in the cockpit, far from everything they knew, and yet he still couldn't pull her into his arms.

What he wanted didn't matter. Only the Rebellion mattered. That was all that mattered at the end of the day, wasn't it? Emotional ties got in the way of that. If any of the higher ups knew how much she meant to him, how much he depended on her, they would separate the two of them and he couldn't handle that. He kept her close by keeping her away. It did not make things any easier.

"You're exposed, out in the open," Riza said. "It won't be just Edward that they'll be after."

"No," Roy replied grimly.

He had put a target on his own back when he'd used the Force to save Edward. He could still remember the stunned, almost affronted look on Darth Van's face when the lightsaber had flown past him and into Roy's outstretched hand. Roy hadn't even thought about it. He'd seen the lightsaber fall along with Edward's arm and he'd thrown out his hand like he could snatch it out of the air - and then it had come right to him, like it had known all along that he would be there to catch it.

"You!" the sith lord had seethed, the heat of the Death Star's destruction glowing in his golden eyes. There had been no doubt in Roy's mind that Darth Van could feel it, the strength of the Force rolling off of Roy in waves. Even Edward's eyes had widened and not just from the pain he was suffering from. He hadn't known either. All this time, everyone had just assumed that the Force they felt was coming from Edward, but it had been seeping out of Roy's bones too. And once he was holding onto it, the lightsaber in his hands, it was there for everyone to know.

Including Emperor Dante, who controlled the Empire with an iron fist. Roy didn't know whether she would be furious or pleased with the introduction of another Force user, especially one as powerful as Roy. Perhaps he wasn't as strong as Darth Van and certainly not as trained, but he knew instantly what he could be capable of and it was both terrifying and electric.

"But I won't be alone," Roy said. "We'll just have to be prepared when they do come."

Riza frowned. "Do you think...? Do you think the Alliance could help?"

Roy couldn't help it; he shook his head, all that Riza needed to know what he thought. The Rebellion was a part of him as much as the Force was these days. He would die for it most likely, as many rebels and intelligence agents did. Of course, being as known to the enemy as he was now, he was likely too compromised to do anymore intelligence missions. He would have to warn General Grumman of that and the man would not be pleased.

But to tell the Alliance of his secret felt just as dangerous as the Empire knowing it. They would use him, surely as much as the Empire would if they could get their hands on him. The difference was that they would try to explain it away as the greater good. A lot of awful things could be done in the name of the greater good though. He'd seen it firsthand. He'd done it firsthand. He would not allow them to use the Force in such a way. The Alliance would twist it, make a mockery of it, and perhaps turn him into a monster just as much as Darth Van. Even good men could be greedy, especially in desperate times such as these.

"Can we trust no one?" Riza asked.

"We can trust each other," Roy answered. It had been like that for years, ever since he showed up on their doorstep asking her father for help. She had been and was the only person he fully trusted and vice versa. They'd only had each other for so long.

Riza let out a sigh. "I don't know if that will be enough."

"We'll be ready when they come," Roy told her firmly. He grasped one of her hands, the touch of her skin sending fire up his fingertips. She snapped her eyes up to his, but didn't let go and instead gripped him tighter. She must've seen the fierceness in his dark eyes because she didn't argue. She only nodded her head. Yes, they would be ready.

What he didn't say was this: I will be ready.

Roy would not let them take Edward, the boy who was passed out in the deck below, strong enough to keep on going after everything that happened but too weak to lift a blanket over himself right now. He knew that despite his promises to Riza, despite the very pressing need to stay out of sight and keep his nose down - to ignore the very essence that made up his being - he would need the Force. It kept calling to him, wanting to be answered, and truth be told, he wanted to do so. He needed it for himself, but also for Edward, who was only just starting his journey with the Force. The galaxy, quite frankly, depended on it.

After all, what did one man's life compare to the galaxy? Riza didn't need to know that though, at least not right now. She would figure it out eventually, as she did all things with him. He could hide things from everyone, including himself, but not from her. He didn't have the heart.


End file.
